Dwarves of Haganistan
by Ryan Fogarty
Edited by Aristde Twain

Post-Apocalyptic Ireland
(The Present)

A wolf watched them from the distance.  His ears were down, and he was keeping very still.

Lieutenant Commander Skez consulted his multiscanner.  “Eyes aware, we are approaching the battle zone!”

Commander Kroft nodded and raised his fist.  “Our enemies today may be clones, but that means they all have the same weakness!  Unlike we, who have only strengths!”

A rough cheer went up down the line.  The Clone Legion was made up of short, stocky dwarves — abkaveech, whose ancestors had been engineered for a heavy-gravity world.  It made them stronger and more durable; the most effective soldiers in the Galaxy, no less!  Their troop included two Luvans with lumpy grey skin used as pack mules, and a single mole-like trivial to handle unimportant administrative tasks.  The Luvans gave no expression, but the mole-like valet cheered along with the soldiers with an inappropriate smile plastered upon his idiot face.

Skez disliked having other species among their troop, even if only for dedicated tasks.  Beside him, technician Sturm was guiding a quartet of silvery reconnaissance drones that circled far above.  Like all equipment in the  Twelfth Battle Fleet, the drones were armed; their species believed in reconnaissance in force.

“Sturm, report!”

“Sir! All readings are clear.  No enemy on scanners yet.”

“Excellent!”

The wolf glanced about a mile ahead of the troopers, where a squad of eight hooded soldiers were lying in ambush concealed under the brambled vegetation.

The action would begin soon, and it might be wise for the wolf to get far enough away to avoid stray shots.

He rose from concealment and trotted along the hill.  The clone troopers noted his presence but let him pass — only part of the local fauna, after all.

Once out of sight, Wagner broke into a sprint, tearing through the underbrush at an impossible pace, paws kicking up rocks and clods of dirt as he dashed among the hills, over their rises and down, down into —

— the Wolf Lord camp!  A dozen men and women lounged about the clearing, some of them in canine form.  Wagner was practically hopping with excitement as he trotted up to Enten.

Lord Entenkālzaku was a tall man with no time for pleasantries.  He pointed a claw-like finger. “Report.”

Wagner ruffed and started drawing a diagram of the troop movements in the dirt.

Enten kicked his paws away.  “Verbal report.  Change back.”

Wagner whined and bent his neck, showing off the R.T.N. Driver on a collar around his neck.  It barely had a single charge.

“Stop whimpering!  Change already.”  Enten slumped back against a chair, not sitting in it so much as upon it, using the arm as a seat with no regard for the creaking it produced.

With a frustrated ruff, Wagner dropped on his belly and pawed the Driver on his collar, then thought as loudly as he could — Lupograalur!

Golden energy swept through his veins, shuddering in his skull.  His paws convulsed, extending one after the other as his jaw clenched, a pounding in his skull that left him whining as his hips adjusted, knees suddenly on the ground — shaggy and matted.  He shook his body and the hair cleared, then began to shorten.  Wagner settled back on his haunches and clenched his teeth as his canines retracted and his jaw shortened.  A darkness flashed before his eyes as the connection to his visual cortex rewired itself.  Full-spectrum color, but at the cost of going nose-deaf…

Wagner stumbled onto his hands.  Human, age 14.  He was wearing shorts — there hadn’t been enough energy to manifest a full set of clothes, but at least this time he wasn’t naked.

Enten used his foot vto poke the boy’s shoulder.  “Speak, Wags.”

“My driver is flat…”  He quickly shifted from the complaint to a full report on the movements of the alien dwarves, and the hooded minions waiting for them.

The one called Gottlieb had wandered over during his explanation.  “Those gray ones… You say there are two?”

“Yes, two.”

Enten shifted his attention for a moment.  “They’re Luvans; servants of the Witches of Varda. The po-tars seem to have inherited them.”

“Or else… the Closed World of Varda is no longer entirely closed.“

“There is no evidence of that,” Enten reminded Gottlieb sharply.

Wagner picked at the collar around his neck.  He wished the R.T.N. Driver was on his belt when he went human; some of the other Wolf Lords were able to do that, but he hadn’t mastered the trick.  It felt vaguely… demeaning.  Another reminder of the pack hierarchy among the werewolves. 

Even so, he dared to ask: 

“What do we have against the Clone Legions anyway?” 

The months since he’d joined had seen dozens of operations like this, on as many planets.  The one on Pelagos had been fun.  But even then, the question had nagged at him. 

Gottlieb reached down to grab his collar.  Under his hand the R.T.N. Driver began to recharge.  He held the boy steady as he growled: 

“The Clone Legions invaded our Homeworld, together with the blasted Vardans.  We sealed the planet Varda, but the Clone Legions also have to pay.”

Homeworld.  The capital letter was audible.  Wagner had never been there.  Even his häusenym of Wagnerpherdenin was just derived from the human name he had growing up.  Most of the Wolf Lords hadn’t been to the Homeworld either; multi-generation descendants of the original Wolf Lords who had left that so-called shining gem-world to fight for the Archons.  No one said they weren’t welcome back, but…

“They’re animals,” Enten opined.  “Prime candidates for retroerasure, if only their species weren’t so essential to restraining the Collective Host.”

Gottlieb agreed.  “Nonetheless, they have overstepped their place.  A penalty must be paid.”

Wagner scratched his knee.  “I read a book about a kid who turned into a hawk and could never turn back.”  Neither man was impressed.

The power dynamics between the two were fraught.  Lord Entenkālzaku was the leader of their pack, but Gottlieb was the owner of the pack’s M.E. Cabinet — the nifty red ship from the Homeworld.  Also, both men had had the same lover.  Which they claimed not to care about, but it made things awkward.

“Well they’ve followed our script well enough.  This should be a black eye for the Twelfth Battle Fleet.”  Gottlieb let go of the boy’s collar — fully charged.  “Go get some clothes, lad.”

He scrambled to his feet and jogged over to the small red cabinet on one side of the clearing.  It looked small, but the interior was a whole little village.  An idea in a box. 

Wagner slipped into the M.E. Cabinet without another thought for the doomed Clone troopers.

* * *

“Covering fire!  Charge, charge, you fools!”

Skez ducked a flurry of flechette rounds as they whizzed over his head.  Several embedded themselves in the lumpy gray Luvan, who barely noticed.

“We are attempting to do so, commander!”  He lowered his helmet.  Now ensconced in the H.U.D., he flicked several directions in the tactical view, only to have Commander Kroft override them and replace them with a blunt charge.

Skez gritted his teeth.  “Covering fire!” he bellowed as he launched himself across the field. 

Bullets ricochet’d off his brown armour and he batted aside one incoming fragmentation grenade before it exploded.  These fighters were putting up a furious resistance!

The Hagganistani troops all wore identical black hoods draped over their faces — some sort of religious thing.  They bellowed high-pitched battle cries and — one was running towards him!  Completely unarmed!

The hooded minion waved his arms wildly as he ran towards the lieutenant commander and shouted; “Frog blast the vent core!”

“Now what is that supposed to —”

The human exploded.  Not just in a welter of gore, but a concussive blast that bowled Skez over and made his ears ring.  He shook his head, trying to get his thoughts straight as heavier and heavier ballistic fire pounded into his armour.  Behind him, one of his brothers — Skrugge — fell when bullets pierced the eyeslits on his helmet.

“Enough!” Skez tottered to his feet and made the damn open charge, firing his plasma blaster wildly — he could be his own damn covering fire!  Flank them with covering fire, get behind them and blow their — 

A flash-bang grenade rocked him, but he continued, barreling directly into a nest of the resistance and struck with gun and knife and bare hands until there was nothing else living.

“Charge… successful.”

Exhausted, Skez stooped and examined their enemies.  Stout figures clothed in anonymous black fatigues and black hoods.  He pulled the hood back, revealing a vacant face with beard stubble.  He did the same to another and found the same face.  He repeated this and found a different face, but then another copy of the first, and then a match for a second….

“Clones.  Commander, I can confirm we are fighting clones.  Several sub-varieties.”

‘Of course Haganistan has clones, you idiot!  That’s why we’re here!’

Skez gritted his teeth.

* * *

Gottlieb studied the tactical display.  The Clone Legion was making steady headway into Hagganistan’s territory, but resistance was stiffening up.

“What I don’t understand,” he opined for anyone who would listen, “is why Ireland tolerates a separatist enclave within its borders.”

“Ireland is a separatist enclave,” Enten retorted.

The map shifted again with the new scout update.  For a moment the landscape turned into an orange plain before sheepishly switching back to the marginally more inhabitable brown and scrub of Ireland.

“The map keeps defaulting back to ancient Mars.  Why is there a Hagganistan region on Earth and Mars, anyway?  Is it like the Mario thing?”

“The reason for that is actually quite simple — ” Enten began, then paused.  “Wait, what ‘Mario thing’?”

“Nearly every sapient race uses ‘Mario’ as a personal name.”

“Really?  Name one!” he challenged.

“Humans.  Also dolphins I think.”

“Ah… so it’s an Earth thing.”

“Not really.  What about the Founder?”

“Which one?”

“Lord Mærio.  He was one of the first Wolf Lords!  Had his own statue in the Celestial Panopticon!”

“Pfft, for like a week.”

“That’s a week longer than any of us!” Gottlieb countered.

“I’ve just never noticed this Mario thing.  Maybe it’s all in your head —”  Suddenly, he pointed to the tactical display.  “Look!  The Lecher Bitch herself has taken to the field!”

* * *

Hagan swung an elephant gun like a club, knocking back the clone trooper before her and shoving the muzzle right in his eyeslit.

“Welcome to Hagganistan!” she shouted, and fired.

The troops around her cheered.  Her minions were tattered but still fending off the incursion of the aliens.  Empress Hagan cut an impressive figure on the battlefield; tall, fierce, clothed in glorious battle armour and fresh warpaint upon her snarling face.

“Why are you in Ireland?” she demanded as she handed the weapon off to a minion to reload.  “I thought you lot only landed in Wales, or Ealing!”

“The glorious forces of the Twelfth Battle Fleet go where we please!” one of the invaders bellowed.

She aimed her flintlock into the Legionaire’s knee and blew off the armored panel — and part of the bone under it.  “Try coming to Limerick and saying that!”

The trooper went down with a cry and one of its compatriots crawled over to him, issuing suppressing fire.  “I’m coming, Mario!”

One of her own clone minions looked around in confusion.  “Me?”

Hagan shot him for his stupidity.  “Yes.  The enemy was coming to rescue you.  Pity he failed!  You hear that, you dwarven meatheads?  You failed!”

“The man is mad!” one cried.

“The Empress is mad, get it right!  Don’t drag me into your potato-sausage-party!”  She sniped another who went down wordlessly.

“No, Marǐo!”

She paused.  “Wait… I thought that one was Mario!”

“Both called Mario!” several Legionaires shouted simultaneously.

“Doesn’t that get confusing?  Not anymore, but, you know, before?”

“We spell it slightly differently,” shouted the one clutching his knee.

She handed her flintlock off to a minion and once again shouldered the elephant rifle. The lush blighted Irish countryside was spattered red and green with blood from both sides.  The Lecher Empress’s own war tunic had a plaintive three-fingered handprint smeared across the chest.  The hand was still crawling around somewhere but its owner had fallen before her.

(Maybe she should redo her war paint in green.)

And then the lumbering gray Luvan smashed through the defenders and barreled directly into her!

Empress Diamanda Hagan went down under the weight with an undignified squawk.  She tried to kick at its ankles but the golem stoically ignored the pain so she pulled a long knife out of her shirtfront and drove it into the lumpy creature’s ankle.  Still no response, but she pushed and with a fibrous ripping noise — severed its Achilles tendon!  Now the creature went down and she rolled to avoid being crushed under it.

She kicked down on the back of its neck with a mad abandon, jamming her heavy boots against its tough hide.  “Minions, bring me a concrete slab, I want to kerbstop this thing!”

One of them dove in and shoved an empty ammunition box under the Luvan’s head.  Close enough.

She stomped until something inside broke and the Luvan sagged.

* * *

“She’s crazy,” Wagner observed as he sipped from his juicebox.

“She’s a cult leader with access to alien technology.”  Gottlieb winced as he watched the Empress do something unspeakable.  “And she fights like a —!”

Yaquezduvel had an easel out and was painting the battle as updates came in from the runners in wolf form.  He was a killer who liked to paint his victims.  With the Wolf Lords having set up both these armies to fight… they all qualified.

Usually Wagner made sure to never be round while Yaquezduvel had the easel out, just in case. But he was focused on the battle today so he got to admire the man’s brush control.  Just as deadly with a poniard.

“Oh look, here comes the War-Dwarves’ commander!”

* * *

Lieutenant-Commander Skez tried to stop Commander Kroft, he really did.  But he charged the madwoman with a vibro-axe, and she used it to peel back his helmet like a can opener.

And then she sliced again and peeled back his skull too.

“You do have brains!  I’m shocked!”  She shoved her fingers into the exposed matter while Kroft twitched and convulsed, and tore the organ out of his head before spiking it on the ground like an American football that exploded in green ichor.

What an idiot.  Still, battlefield promotion!  “I am assuming command!”  Skez bellowed over the C.O.M.S..  “Troops, advance to the rear!”

One of his Legionnaires was stupid enough to actually turn and retreat rather than falling back while facing the enemy.  He got a knife thrown directly into the vent at the back of his armour’s neck courtesy of the Empress.

Honestly it saved Skez the trouble.  Plus, executing his own troops as his first action as commander would have been horrible for morale.  Maybe he should thank her!

Instead he called for air support.  “Sturm, blanket the crazed human!”

The silvery reconnaissance drones swarmed in out of the sky and started peppering her with cluster grenades.  She swung the blunderbuss like a bat and knocked one grenade away, then grabbed one of her underlings to use as a meatshield.

Leave it to Kroft to snatch glorious defeat from the jaws of victory.  Their late commander was a nepo-hatchling promoted without merit and everyone knew it.

An object came bouncing down the hill towards Skez.  It was the grenade that Hagan had batted away!  Lieutenant-Commander Skez dove for cover as the grenade exploded, embedding needle-like shrapnel all across his armor.

But curiously rather than press her advantage, the enemy commander was looking up the hill.  Skez looked too — there was one of the local canids sitting guiltily in the dirt — it had rolled the rogue grenade back down towards Skez!

The Empress of Haganistan aimed her flintlock at the animal and took a shot.  It dodged and cast a withering glare back at her along with a warning growl.  She shot again.

“Hold still you cur!  Minions, fire at the wolves!  We’re being played.”

As one their enemies turned and began to fire at the fleeing creature.  One round struck its side and it staggered but continued to run.

Skez laughed in amazement.  “Is she mad?  We are her enemy!”  He raised his rifle and steadied his aim…

Annoyed, Hagain aimed her blunderbuss into the sky and shot at one of the reconnaissance drones as it fired.  The grenades exploded too close, causing the drone to careen downward and forcing Skez to fall back from the explosion.  When he regained his footing Hagan was charging directly towards him!

She grabbed his shoulders and headbutted him, cracking his visor.  Snow filled his viewscreen and he heard the collar of his armour squeal and then give as it was pried back with a hand-jack.  Startled, he stared into the face of his enemy.

She drew back her hand and slapped him.  Hard! And then she did it again until his ears rang.

“Cease fire, you tsunderen moron.  I’m not your only enemy today!”

“Balderdash!”

“You idiot!”

* * *

The wolves were decamping. Boxes and food gathered up, pawprints scratched out and their members filing back into the Metaphysical Engine.

Magra was writhing on the dirt, golden light pouring over her wolf form.  The waves of R.T.N. energy elongated her limbs and reshaped her into the form of a human woman.  The change had healed Magra’s wound and with a cough, she spat out the bullet.

Her shifting, noted Wagner, completed by forming a dress as she staggered to her feet.  And her R.T.N. Driver made a discrete pod on her belt.

“Hurry on lad.”

Wagner grabbed a supply box which would have been far too heavy for him to lift if he still had human physiology and bundled it through the doors of the M.E. Cabinet.  The entrance went much further back, leading to an entire village which had been built under domed arched ceilings of gray coral.

He saw Magda’s cublings and called out, assuring them that their mother was alright and no, they could not go outside and see her, she would be in presently.

Their operation had been discovered and the Wolf Lords were evacuating before they faced the wrath of two armies.

* * *

Turns out you can’t beat sense into an abkaveech War-Dwarf.

Shouting the truth at Lieutenant Commander Skez had been slightly more effective.  And once it seemed like he was halfway listening Empress Hagan drove the point home by lifting the dwarf up and planting her knee into the alien’s crotch.

To her surprise Skez went down with a groan.

She demanded “Are you faking?  You don’t have genitals down there!”

“S-some of us do….”  Skez tried to get up, collapsed again.  “It’s an atavistic throwback trait, like facial hair, present in about —”

“Great, just what the universe needed.  Rooting potatoes!”

“What did you say about root —”

“Rooting!”

“Ah, a routine insult.  Typical of lower life-forms,” he growled.

She kicked him in the head, but he grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the ground with him!  A vicious hail of punches and kicks ensued as they rolled across the blood-soaked battlefield.

“Stop it you idiot!” she shouted.  “Hey you, he surrenders!”

Skez’s troops paused in confusion.

“I do not surrender!”

She rolled on top of him and struck him again and again until Skez’s nose broke.  She shook her wrist and grimaced.  “Yes, you do surrender, because I surrender!”

A gasp went up among her hooded minions.

“Ugh, very well… Troops, a temporary cease-fire!”

“And parlay!”  Hagan spat out a tooth, frowned and picked it up to examine closely.  “I don’t think this is mine.”

Skez glared at her.

She tossed the tooth away.  “We are not the only two armies afoot in this battlefield!  A third force, hiding in plain sight as animals, is playing us against one another!”

“Shapeshifters?”  That got his attention.

“Yes, form-shifters.  Lycanthropes.”  She gave Skez one last shove into the dirt and stood up.  She ignored the laser-sights painted on her, dancing like malignant fireflies.

“Get up!  We have wolves to skin!”

* * *

They were too late.  A low vibration as they approached the camp told her their quarry had already departed, but their combined forces quickly secured the clearing anyway, making note of the markings in the dirt and the strange mixture of footprints.

“…so your motive for attacking Haganistan —”

“Was your cloning facilities,” Skez confirmed.  “We received intelligence of their superior quality —”

“Received, ha! It was leaked.”  She gave Skez an appraising eye.  He had shifted gears quickly enough when presented with facts.  “This whole thing was a setup from the get-go.  That’s how your little troop could have gotten this deep into my territory without being spotted by satellites.”

Her steward Teddy had been deep in conversation with Gnonnote, the Legionnaires’ ratlike valet.  He raised a correcting finger.  “Akt-shualy Mistress, you destroyed all of the satellites because —”

“— of the reason, yes.  A nasal negative-nostalgic reason.  You mean we haven’t launched a replacement?”

“The funds were diverted, ma’am.  You declared a national holiday in honor of your cheekbones, so we….”

“Shut up!  You’re making me look foolish in front of the comedy-relief villains.”  She rubbed a cheekbone thoughtfully.  “Be grateful it wasn’t in honor of my jawline, the celebrations would have gone all week.”

“Yes Mistress.”

“Also, I want you to eat that finger later.”

“Yes Mistress,” sighed Teddy.

Skez watched as Hagan knelt and pressed her fingers to a bald spot on the ground, then smelled them. “What are you doing?”

“An old Patri trick.”  She tasted her fingertips and made a face.  “Not a t—…” She snapped her fingers.  “Metaphysical Cabinet!  Now I know it was the Wolf Lords.”

“Wolf Lords? Are they related to the —”

“The Lords Temporal?  You bet!  One of their dirty little secrets, created to hunt vampires.  They used energy from the Rotary Time Nexus to regenerate their bodies between humanianoids and canids — in essence, werewolves.  Wolf Lords, Were Lords, War-dogs….  They have a bunch of names and varieties.”

“The Twelfth Battle Fleet,” Skez mused, “has encountered numerous ‘coincidental’ misfortunes since the alliance with Varda.”

“Well duh.  You invaded the homeworld of one of the most advanced civilisations in this Universe.  Did you think there would not be consequences?”

“The goal was to capture the planet, not fail!  That was the fault of —”

“Zip it!  Okay, my people!  We’re almost done here, so go gather up the dead.  The Minions are eating well tonight!”

A ragged cheer went up from her hooded followers.  Teddy began to raise a finger, thought better of it, and asked: 

“What should we do with our dead?”

“The same.”

Teddy shrank.  “Yes Mistress.”

“Oh and Teddy?  Bring me the Commander’s oysters if he has any.  I hear they pair well with chocolate.”  She turned back to Skez, only to find that he had his rifle pointed at her.

“It seems,” he said, “that we are at an impasse.”

“How do you figure?” she asked nonchalantly.

“Haganistan still has the advanced cloning facilities that the Twelfth Battle Fleet needs.”

She rolled her eyes and pushed the rifle barrel aside.  “They were advanced — once.  But I kneecapped the looming matrix so that no one could try to clone me.  Now all it can make are these morons!”

Her hooded morons waved amiably.

Did he believe her?  Skez wavered, then lowered the rifle with a sigh.  He had a responsibility to bring the intelligence about the werewolf saboteurs back to the Twelfth Battle Fleet.  Not worth the risk.

Skez raised his voice.  “Legionnaires of the Twelfth Battle Fleet!  We have achieved a glorious victory today, bringing back intelligence about a secret enemy….”

Hagan laughed throughout his entire speech.  Skez hated her so much.

***

EPILOGUE:

The Metaphysical Engine Cabinet thrummed softly in flight, a familiar comfort to Wagner.  The elemental vessel was old, taking days between destinations — days best spent roaming the narrow alleys of their vaulted village in wolf form, shaking his tail at passersby.

Supplies still cluttered the village streets after their hasty departure, but Wagner had just done field service so he was free to run wild rather than help.

A metallic tang of solvents caught his nose.  He padded over to an unsorted pile and tugged back a sheet — Yaquezduvel’s oil painting of the battle.

Vivid white and carmine glared back at him, and eyes that seemed to follow him.

Wagner quickly covered it and trotted off, secret knowledge lightening his steps.  The Wolf Lord Yaquezduvel only painted those he intended to hunt.

And under that sheet, resplendent in red and white war-paint…

It seemed the Were Lords would return to Haganistan.  Someday.

[fin]